Heidi's Intro

A fresh new blog and a fresh new start!

All of us deserve a fresh start, right?  Myself included.  Especially when it comes to weight loss.  I got the idea for this blog while searching for something new to motivate myself to make the changes I need to get back down to my pre-baby weight.  Or at least to my pre-fifth baby weight (which was slightly lower than my pre-first baby weight).  See, this is my second time going on a successful weight loss journey.  (Look how positive I am!  Hoo-RAH!)  By the time I got pregnant with my fourth baby, my weight had climbed up to about 190 lbs.  (I'm going to be straightforward about numbers here.)  I felt sluggish, I had no energy to keep up with my kids, and my depression had been debilitating at times.  During the pregnancy I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and it was kind of a slap-in-the-face wake up call.  All my gradual weight creep was affecting my health.  I started seriously considering what kind of future I wanted to have.  Diabetes?  (My doc told me I'll be at higher risk for that the rest of my life.)  Heart disease?  (Our father had to have quintuple bypass surgery in his early 50's, and Amy and I are both considered high risk just because of our family history.)  What about just being embarrassingly out of breath every time I tried to walk to the park with the kids?

All of that had an effect on me.  And let's be brutally honest here, I wasn't happy with how I looked.  A mom with young kids often looks frazzled and frumpy and I was tired of feeling frazzled, frumpy and fat, on top of it all.

So finally I had the right motivation, and I managed to lose a whopping 55 pounds and keep it off.  (Though my numbers pale in comparison to Amy's!)  But life doesn't always go like we plan and I got thrown a curveball.

That curveball for me was my surprise baby #5.  I put 60 pounds right back on during that pregnancy.  Yep.  Well, my sweet baby #5 is now a toddler and I am still struggling to get back down to my "success" weight.  I've been stuck where I am for about a year.  I don't know it's if my age (I'm nearing 40 now, yikes!) or just my love of food holding me back-- or both.

No longer!

I am taking my health by the reins, and I am going to succeed!  17 pounds to go!